Ufouria: The SagaReview

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Bop 'til you drop.

By Lucas M. Thomas

The Virtual Console lives! Well, sort of. We already knew that this 8-bit NES import was on the way to the American Wii Shop courtesy of Sunsoft, but even just one previously-confirmed title actually making it into the weekly "Nintendo Download" press release is enough to keep we downtrodden VC fans' hopes for the service from being entirely extinguished. And though this may be the only new title the Console sees throughout the month of August, it is, at least, a pretty good one.

Ufouria: The Saga is a hop-and-bop exploratory platformer that combines the go-anywhere, interconnected world map concept of NES era games like Metroid, Blaster Master and Simon's Quest with the multiple playable characters idea explored by Super Mario Bros. 2 and Dracula's Curse. It's an intriguing mix, as your adventure begins with a single hero – the pale-skinned, bug-eyed, blue-capped Bop-Louie – and doesn't let you get too far before you realize you're going to need some help. Bop-Louie can run, jump, stomp enemies and climb up ropes, but he can't swim or handle ice-covered surfaces.

So you'll need to find his friend Freeon-Leon for that. You'll discover him early on, as the opponent in your first boss battle – beat him down by drilling him with a ball enough times and his memory will be jogged, after which he'll join your quest. That's when things start getting fun. You can pause the game at any time to switch between Louie and Leon, and you'll find that your new lizard companion covers the weaknesses his predecessor held – he can both swim and handle himself on ice. Together, then, the two can progress even further.

Headshot.

Bop-Louie and Freeon-Leon ultimately meet up with two more friends who add yet more abilities to the growing group, for a final line-up of four diverse heroes who each have their own role to play. This, again, isn't an entirely unprecedented idea from the 8-bit age – but the ability to swap characters any time you want sells it here. How different would Super Mario Bros. 2 have played if you could have used Mario to take out some Shy Guys, switched to Toad to pluck up a bunch of vegetables super fast, swapped to Luigi to handle a high platform jump and then brought in the Princess to hover over a long gap, all within the span of 10 seconds? The dynamic would have been totally different, and that's what Ufouria feels like.

Of course, the game also knows this. Ufouria's been specifically designed with character-swapping in mind, and it can occasionally be a bit too repetitive and frustrating because of it – only Freeon-Leon can freeze your foes to turn them into temporary platforms, for instance, but his jumping isn't all that great. So you'll have sequences where you'll use him to freeze a guy, pause, switch to a better jumper, jump, pause, switch back to Leon, freeze the next guy, pause . . . you get the idea. When Ufouria's character-switching feels like freedom, it's fun. When it feels like work, and when you're spending more time on the pause screen than the game itself, it's frustrating.

The game also lacks some of the conveniences that have made interconnected game worlds more easily traversed in more modern games, like a functional map and multiple checkpoints. There's a map here, but it's pretty worthless – just a low-detail collection of black boxes on a sub-screen. And there's only one checkpoint, the first one. Where you start the game. So if you ever die and see the Game Over screen, you're heading all the way back – like Link getting flung back to the side of the sleeping princess in Zelda II, you'll still have all your collected items and characters with you. You'll just have a lot of walking to do to get back to where you were.

The entire adventure's also not that long, and not that challenging.

A mini-boss who barfs up balls.

So, with all these comparisons I'm making to other, better-known NES classics, the potential for frustation in some of its sequences and its lack of length and modern amenities, I might have just ended up convincing you that you don't need to bother with Ufouria – and maybe you don't. But don't discount its last positive point before making your judgment call – it is truly, truly weird.

Ufouria's greatest strength, I think, must be its extreme level of general oddity. It's just messed up. The characters, the world – the animation, for sure. Each of the heroes looks like they might be brainless, as they stupidly grin, stare blankly out from the screen or stick out their tongues to offer evidence of their lack of mental stability. Their moves, though, really stand out – Bop-Louie's ultimate attack power-up allows him to charge up the power of spinning hearts and then launch his own head away from his body to bash enemies, and Leon, after ducking to the ground, actually crawls along the floor flat on his back. Take my word for it, it's beautifully random and ridiculous, and nearly worth the price of admission alone.

The Verdict

This is a weird, weird game, and it's that kind of uniqueness that makes me feel just a bit better about the current, sorry state of the Virtual Console &#Array; because even if we aren't getting many new games, at least the ones we are getting are memorable. Ufouria's also especially unique here in America, as it was only ever originally released in Japan and Europe back in the early '90s. That means it's been given the Virtual Console's Import branding and priced a buck higher than it otherwise would have been &#Array; making it six dollars to own, instead of five &#Array; but I still think that's an acceptable entry price to Bop-Louie's world.